> If they do, the money goes to pay founders/investors in the target company
And when Tesla spends it, the money goes to workers that perform the physical labour. These situations differ in amount of people getting rewarded and in how long these chains are, but in the end, you give money to people for exchange for something valuable they created.
They differ (at least that's what I was argueing) in terms of what happens with the money the moment after the investment happens.
If Google takes $5bn (imagine they don't have it) from a firm/fund to buy a software company, that money goes to founders and investors. In practice, the money went out of a an investment pool and into another one, staying in the macro-pool.
What happens when tesla takes $5bn is it comes out of the fund and goes to pay parts manufacturers, toolers, builders.. IE, it is spent in the "real" (in the sense that economists use th term) economy. One affects the ethereal world of bank balances and stock valuations. The other affects wages and production of goods and services.
And when Tesla spends it, the money goes to workers that perform the physical labour. These situations differ in amount of people getting rewarded and in how long these chains are, but in the end, you give money to people for exchange for something valuable they created.